For this project, I wanted to explore an interior, messy composition. The idea was to imagine how someone would be remembered after they pass - a mingling of their old belongings, hobbies, attire and activities, but also influenced by the medicalisation of illness in the modern world.
I used quite a few Megascans/ BlenderKit assets for this - the easel, the coat stand, the lamps, the chandelier, the music stand and the raven (not exhaustive). However, I did model many of the remaining items, including the hospital bed, fan, clock, oxygen tank, portable ventilator machine and radiator (again not exhaustive).
Some things of interest:
I wanted the hospital mattress to be torn and mangled. This was achieved with a Boolean tool to create holes in the mattress, which I then filled in with meshes with a quick fur modifier stack. I used geometry proximity between the mattress and the Boolean object to influence the materials.
The “paintings” are photographs of mine which I ran through FotoSketcher to make them painterly impressions. It’s not very obvious but the painting in the box (bottom right corner) is meant to be unfinished; I used a colour burn and gradient tool to achieve this.
I played around with fisheye settings for the scene camera - I tried a few different compositions but this turned out to be one of the better ones.
I tried out DaVinci Resolve for the first time in compositing - I didn’t really do much, but I did use a filmic LUT which I think improved the colours. The remaining compositing and grading was done in Lightroom Mobile.
Imagine, we almost lost Ton to the old world, but didn’t. He stood in “the modern world” and is doing well, apparently. Pheeew…! I sure hope Blender people remain in a world when, as illness comes, it gets immediately medicalised.
I’ve seen first hand what happens to people in “the not-modern world (!?)”. It’s not pretty, it’s not dignified, it’s not romantic. At all. Illness can be really cruel, even for a disassociated artist, when it comes to say its hello.
Thanks for commenting! I largely agree with your statement - as a medical professional myself I’ve seen firsthand what modern medicine can do for people on an individual and population basis. For most people, modern medicine improves lifespans and allow people to live better and fuller lives.
At the same time, the best medical interventions still have their limits. It is often towards an end-of-life scenario that sometimes medical interventions can become less effective, and the loss of dignity, independence and comfort outweigh the benefits that these interventions may provide in increasing quantity and/or quality of life. There isn’t always an easy answer as to when this point may be reached for each person. Some people want to carry on with these interventions to the very end. Others simply want to go home and enjoy the remaining life they have, rather than remain in hospital away from family to receive a treatment which may prolong their life for a few weeks. Many of them struggle to reconcile their decisions. Often, there is a love-hate relationship between these people and medicine, and who can blame them for the suffering they endure? Thankfully there are branches of medicine today such as palliative care which deal with these difficult situations and help patients improve their quality of life even at the very end.
I think it’s this complex dynamic that I wanted to explore with this art - my apologies if my initial description seemed to portray the medicalisation of illness as a purely bad thing, because that was not my intention.
I appreciate the thought behind the scene. I also enjoyed reading the detailed write up, eg the fisheye lens detail and the Davinci Resolve color correction details wouldn’t have been apparent to me if i’d not read about them.
